The So-Called “Civil War”

 

By Steven Halpern

While I’ve read a few books on the Civil War, I don’t consider myself an expert on that enormous conflict. Currently I’m reading W.E.B. DuBois book Black Reconstruction in America. For me, this book puts the history of the Civil War, as well as its aftermath in a unique, and convincing framework. 

We can begin by asking the question: Was the Civil War, in actuality, a civil war? Certainly, many if not all historians of this war view it as a “war between the states.” According to this logic, more soldiers died in the Civil War than in any other war in the history of the United States. What are the facts?

The confederate states seceded from the United States and established another country. The government of that country established its own monetary system. This was clear evidence that the government of the confederacy wanted to break all ties with the U.S. government. Therefore, only the soldiers in the Union Army who died in the war were fighting a war that was loyal to this country. In fact, there were more U.S. soldiers who died in the Second World War than the number of Union soldiers who died in the Civil War.  

Then there is the question: What was the primary cause of the Civil War? DuBois gave a considerable amount of evidence showing that at the beginning of the war the primary issue was the secession of the confederate states from the Union. The confederate army attacked the Union at Fort Sumpter and was preparing to go to war. The aim was to subjugate the government in Washington to the will of the slave owning government.

Throughout the 19th century, up until the election of Abraham Lincoln for President, the slave owners, in essence, controlled all three branches of the federal government. They wanted the western lands to be governed by slave owners. They drove through the Fugitive Slave Act that required the northern state governments to aid slave catchers in apprehending escaped slaves. They even controlled the Postmaster General who prohibited abolitionist literature from being sent through the mail.

With the election of Lincoln, the slave owners understood that they were losing control of the government, as well as their way of life. While Lincoln was no abolitionist, he clearly was no servant to the slave owners. That point of view was intolerable to the government officials of the confederacy.

Initially the goals of the confederate army appeared to be realizable. The army of the slave owners defeated the Union Army in the first battles. All this army needed to do was to march into Washington DC and take control of the capitol. Then the slave owners might force the federal government to bow to its will. 

Even if the confederate army failed to take Washington, they thought that the Union Army would eventually give up in a war of attrition. General George McClellan was a commander of the Union Army and felt that the best his forces could do was to force the confederacy to make a deal with the government in Washington. McClellan advanced this perspective when he ran for President against Lincoln during the Civil War.

However, there was one persistent problem the slave owners weren’t thinking about. This was the fact that the confederate army was dependent on Black slaves for their food as well as for the income they would get from cash crops. These slave owners understood that there were racist attitudes against Blacks in the north. For these and other reasons, the slave owners had the seemingly insane idea that the slaves would prefer a life of slavery, rather than taking a chance to become free. 

Today many people are aware of the slave rebellions of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. Many people are also aware the fact that about 250,000 Black soldiers fought in the Union Army. What most people are unaware of is what DuBois called the “General Strike.”

During the Civil War between 500,000 and 700,000 Black slaves left the slave labor camps and joined the Union forces. DuBois reported that initially Union officers sent slaves back to the slave labor camps. Then many of those officers began to understand that if they accepted the escaped slaves into their ranks, this would benefit the Union Army in many ways.

For a moment, we might think the reality those slaves experienced. That reality convinced them to leave the slave labor camps. An excellent summary of those conditions is included in Edward E. Baptist’s book The Half Has Never Been Told – Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.

Capitalists are routinely driven to accomplish two goals. These are to sell more and more commodities and to cut costs. For the slave owner, this meant that they needed to continually coerce slaves to produce more and more using horrendous and unimaginable means of torture. 

For Black women slavery was even worse. Rape by slave owners was routine. Then the slave owners forced Black women to have sex with men to produce children that would be profitable. The slave owners would even enslave their own children to maximize their profits. 

This was the environment that caused hundreds of thousands of slaves to leave the plantations. Most of those slaves did not know how to read. The slave laws stated that if a slave was caught learning how to read, that so-called crime could be punished by death. 

Allow me to speculate on something that DuBois didn’t write about in his important book. In the Union Army there was a minority of soldiers who supported the idea of the abolition of slavery. However, most of those soldiers didn’t support abolition, and we might add that most probably had racist attitudes against Black people.

However, we might imagine the reaction of many of those Union soldiers when they looked at the escaped slaves, as well as the scars on their backs from the whippings those slaves endured. We might imagine the reaction of those rank-and-file soldiers when they learned of all the horrendous experiences of those slaves, as well as their determination to defeat the confederacy. Then, the Union soldiers realized that they had a real cause to defeat the army that was dedicated to perpetuating those horrors. 

So, the General Strike of the escaped slaves transformed the Civil War. Abolitionists in the North mobilized to support the escaped slaves. Workers in Britain opposed slavery and mobilized in opposition to the British capitalists who supported the confederacy. Instead of producing food and cash crops for the confederacy, the escaped slaves tended the hospitals, built fortifications, farmed land, and became spies for the Union. Then about 250,000 Black soldiers fought for the Union at a time when those soldiers were essential to a Union victory.

Most histories of the Civil War center on the experiences of men. However, when we look at the essential contribution of Black people to the Union victory, I believe we can also say that the contribution of Black women was indispensable. Those women tended the wounded in the hospitals, they farmed the land, they worked as spies giving essential information to the Union Army. They gave invaluable support to Black men, but were also known for protesting when they were abused.       

The Russian Revolution

Just as the General Strike of the slaves in the Civil War was central to the Union Victory, the general strike of Russian workers in 1917 was central to the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution.

By the year 1917, literally millions of Russian soldiers died in the First World War. The war also caused conditions of famine in the cities. Russia was ruled by a czar who had absolute power and dissolved the Russian parliament known as the Duma. 

Under those conditions, the workers organized the Soviets or workers councils to defend their interests through mass action. So, under these conditions workers throughout the cities went on strike. Initially they arrested the czar. Then, after the Bolsheviks advanced the demands of Peace, Bread, and Land, as well as All Power to the Soviets, the working class ousted the provisional government and put the Soviets in power.

Many historians argued that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was “spontaneous.” In his History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky argued against that point of view. Trotsky argued that the masses of Russian workers and soldiers were determined to bring about profound change. That movement was so powerful that workers risked their lives for a chance at this change. Soldiers, who were under orders to murder the workers, refused to obey those orders. Instead, they arrested the officers who gave those orders.

So, how was the Russian Revolution in any way similar to the experience of the escaped slaves? 

Although many of the salves and Russian workers were illiterate, they were conscious of the fact that they were determined to bring about profound change. That iron will of the slaves and Russian workers transformed the world.

Most historians write about history from the point of view of the political officials, military officers, or the capitalists who have obscene amounts of money. However, revolutions happen because of a determined effort by toilers to bring about profound change. Understanding that point of view, we can say that the so-called Civil War was, in reality, the second revolution of the United States. With all its many limitations, it succeeded in removing the slave owners from political power in this country.

As Vladimir Ilyich Lenin argued in his pamphlet State and Revolution, the state was invented for capitalism as a “special instrument of repression.” So, while the Civil War removed slave owners from power, workers continue to be slaves to the system of wages. Central to the history of capitalism in the United States has been the discrimination against Black people who have lived here for hundreds of years.   

Clearly Abraham Lincoln, in spite of his many limitations played an important part in bringing about the defeat of the confederacy. Clearly, the Bolsheviks also played a leadership role in the Russian Revolution. However, without the mass movements of escaped slaves, as well as the Russian working class, both the Civil War and the Bolshevik Revolution would have been defeated.

In W.E.B. DuBois’ book Black Reconstruction in America, he went on to outline what happened after the Civil War. On the one hand the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, give everyone “equal rights,” as well as voting rights. 

But then, by the year 1877 the federal government decided in effect to give political power in the former slave states to the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, Black people lost the citizenship rights they gained after the Civil War.

I wrote about that period in my review of Peter Camejo’s book Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877: The rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction. While that is an important book, I plan to write another blog about what DuBois had to say about that period.